The present invention is directed to a tracking system and, more particularly, to a method for installing products and tracking the location of products which have been installed at a number of remote locations.
Many large companies, particularly utilities, purchase products from many suppliers. The products are typically warehoused and then used as needed. For example, an electrical utility may purchase 50 spools of underground cable from one cable manufacturer at one time. The cable will then be installed underground at different locations within the utilities service area. Thus, over a given time period, products from a single supplier of that utility will be installed at many separate locations within the service area.
After products have been installed, it may be desirable to identify the location of those products for various reasons. For example, a supplier may notify the utility that a certain shipment of products contains manufacturing defects which shorten that product's service life. In such an instance, instead of risking a loss of service in areas utilizing that product, the utility will prefer to replace that installed product with an acceptable substitute. Since the products may have been originally installed at a large number of locations within the utilities service area, the utility must first identify the locations of that supplier's products.
Some methods previously utilized by utilities to keep track of the locations of products from different manufacturers are inefficient and excessively time-consuming. One method requires the utility's installation teams to complete a form for each installation with information relating to the job site, such as location, time and date of installation, names of the members of the installation team, the type of work performed, and the identity of products installed. This "work ticker" is then returned to a central location where it is filed along with similar forms.
It will be appreciated that the installation teams of large utilities generate hundreds of these forms per day and thousands of these forms every year. When it becomes desirable to identify the locations of a specific product made by a certain supplier, it is virtually impossible to examine the actual installation locations. Therefore, it has been necessary to physically review the large number of "work tickets" generated during the time period over which that company's product had been utilized. This task of physically reviewing the forms created over several years is monumental.
It is therefore desirable to provide a more efficient method for installing and tracking the location of installed products.